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A 29 year old student of Brown County’s Southern State Community College was abducted from the campus parking lot by 29 year old Nathan Parsons, an acquaintance of the victim.  She was saved 21 minutes later by the GPS tracking device built into her cell phone.

She showed up to her first class of the day on the 16^th of November at 10:19, not knowing that Parsons had been waiting for the past half hour for her to arrive.  He got out of his pickup truck, “forcibly placed her into his vehicle, and then drove off the campus property,” said Lt. Randy McElfresh of the Ohio State Police.  Parking lot surveillance footage captured each moment on camera, which aided in proving it was premeditated.

While Parsons attempted to escape, the victim used her cell phone equipped with GPS tracking capabilities to dial 911.  Dispatchers were able to follow the truck’s movements.  Panicked moments ensued when the phone signal was lost, but the victim quickly dialed 911 a second time.  Dispatchers determined who she was, and told her it would be wise to hide her phone for the duration of the ordeal.

They tracked Parsons’ location and a chase ensued, which at one point involved spike strips.  When the strips were tossed into the roadway, Parsons thought he had outsmarted them by off-roading through farm land but soon became stuck, allowing police to close in and make an arrest.  Parsons was taken to the Brown County Jail in Georgetown.

The police are using this case as an example to urge all citizens to utilize the GPS feature of their cell phones, as many cell phone users don’t want to be tracked and end up turning this feature off.  Lt. Heitkemper of the OSP says that if this feature of the phone had been turned off in this case, finding the victim “would have just been luck.  Because of GPS, we knew exactly where they were at all times.”

He says that every one of us should use this technology if it is available.  “If you can just dial 911 and let [the phone] lay beside you, they can hear your conversation.  You don’t have to say a thing and the 911 system will be able to pinpoint your exact location.”

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It shouldn’t come as a surprise that landlines are becoming obsolete technology. An increasing number of households have disconnected their landline phones, because many residents already have mobile phones with signals strong enough to work inside their homes. To the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), this trend poses a potential problem for emergency response teams. Currently, when a 911 call is placed from a landline, the emergency dispatcher automatically receives the caller’s address, which helps them respond quicker. This is especially important in cases where the emergency prevents the caller from being able to tell the dispatcher his or her location.

The beauty of the landline is that it is attached to a specific location, whereas mobile phones are, well, mobile. The FCC’s solution is to require that all mobile phones are equipped with GPS tracking technology by 2018. When a 911 call is placed from a GPS-equipped phone, dispatchers can easily access the GPS tracking information and respond accordingly. The plan was established in September 2010, giving cell phone providers an eight-year period to make these changes.

The FCC expects implementing GPS tracking to all phones will not be very difficult or expensive for providers. In fact, most 2G and 3G mobile phones “shipped by manufactures were equipped with GPS-chips. By the end of the eight-year implementation period, network-based carriers will likely have complied with their location accuracy benchmarks by ‘blending in’ such location-capable handsets,” said the FCC.

In order to meet the FCC’s requirements, 85 percent of a company’s users are required to have GPS-equipped mobile phones. According to the FCC, by 2018 “the public safety community, wireless carriers, location technology vendors and other stakeholders will have a significantly better understanding of how much time network-based carriers will need.” Along with GPS tracking, the FCC is also in the works to require emergency response teams to accept text messages, videos and photos from mobile phones in the event of an emergency.

Article Written by Marisa O’Connor

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There has been a lot of controversy in the media lately regarding GPS tracking technology. Most of these stories involve questionable use of the technology by police, in order to gather evidence or apprehend a suspect. All authorities need is a cell phone number, and if the phone has GPS tracking enabled, as so many modern phones do, the phone’s location can be traced with incredible speed and accuracy.

Many people enjoy the technology for personal use, to find directions or track their running times. However, people tend to feel differently about the police or Apple tracking their movements. That is, unless it’s used to save their life.

David Simon, a 56-year-old St. Louis resident, has GPS tracking technology and the initiative of St. Charles emergency dispatchers to thank for his life. He had been suffering from liver cancer and badly needed a transplant.

His doctors estimated that if he didn’t receive a transplant in the next four weeks, he probably wouldn’t survive. After much time spent anxiously awaiting that life-saving call, Simon and his wife decided to take a vacation to Osaga Beach.

When you’re waiting for an organ transplant, timing is critical. Hospitals don’t know when an organ will be available, so they advise patients on the waiting list to say close to the hospital and always near their phones. When Simon’s liver became available, his phone was in another room, where he couldn’t hear it.

St. Louis University Hospital sent dispatchers to Simon’s house in a desperate effort to find him, and eventually learned that he and his wife were in Osage Beach. Unfortunately, they didn’t have an address. St. Charles emergency dispatchers used his phone number to track his GPS location, and were able to rush him to the hospital in the nick of time. David Simon reported to ksdk.com news that he was feeling “A lot, lot better. Emotionally and physically.”

Article Written by Marisa O’Connor

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After stealing the contents from over 25 vehicles in Steens, Mississippi, William Bowen was arrested thanks to a GPS enabled cell phone he swiped from one of the cars.

When one of the victims realized his GPS device equipped cell phone had been stolen, he immediately contacted AT&T to inform them.  AT&T reps then contacted the Lowndes County Sheriff’s Department and led them straight to the crook.

Upon seeing the police, Bowen began throwing items from his car window, but he held onto the cellphone in question. Seemingly, this crook thought police were tracking other items. It also didn’t help that Bowen was throwing stolen items out of his car window while authorities were watching.

“He took purses, change, checkbooks, small stuff; we’re still looking for a couple of guns missing.  We’re still getting phone calls from people just finding out,” says one of the investigators, Tony Cooper, who doesn’t often see a case turn out like this.  “We’ve had other investigations where we pinged phones and found people, this is one of the few I can recall where someone stole a cell phone with GPS, and all of their movements led us right to him.”

Authorities are still attempting to put a dollar value to the crime.

Article Written by Khristen Foss

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There’s a lot of hoopla these days about GPS tracking in cell phones, but have you considered the benefits of the feature if you lose your phone? You know you can use the GPS navigation feature to get you places, but there are also lots of options for getting your phone back through tracking. It’s a great hassle, frustration, and disappointment to lose your phone or have it stolen.

Depending on how tied you are to your phone, you might feel like your whole life is contained in that tiny little device. You may not remember your schedule; you may not be able to contact people for important needs, whether business or personal; you may feel disconnected and lost without it. Fortunately, your iPhone has a GPS tracker inside, so a satellite can find it anytime, anywhere. There are several software programs that enable you to take advantage of this feature.
Apple’s MobileMe online subscription service includes now includes a service called Find My iPhone. If your phone is lost, you can log in and trace your phone’s GPS coordinates on Google Maps. When you know you’re close, you can force the phone to play a sound for 2 minutes. Some people suggest MobileMe is the best option, as some other programs require you to “jailbreak” your phone, invalidating your warranty.
iLocalis is another program that allows you to find and remote control your iPhone. You can log on to the iLocalis site to track a missing phone. You can also send a text message to or call a stolen phone from the website, and even if the thief has changed the sim card, you’ll have the new number, allowing for easier retrieval.
Mobile Spy from Retina-X studios is a spy software that can be used to track the GPS location of an iPhone, and is used for employee or family phones. It runs behind other applications and sends the data it collects to a server, so the user can access information through an online account. It also records SMS messages and call activity.
Navizon uses a combination of GPS, Wi-Fi, and cellular triangulation to locate a missing phone. It offers a fifteen-day personal trial and a commercial subscription.
With so many options, you really don’t need to worry about finding your iPhone. Just choose the software that best fits your purposes, and rest assured your phone is easy to locate.

Article Written by Kadence Vyra

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Don Bailey is a born hacker.  Rather than use this skill maliciously, he chooses to teach others about hacking, so that they can protect themselves against hackers. Bailey hosts workshops such as “Carmen Sandiego is on the Run” and “War Texting: Identifying and Interacting with Devices on the Telephone Network.”

Last year, he showed his students how easy it is for someone to track down any cell phone number, associate a person’s name with that number, and locate a person’s whereabouts using GPS cell phone location technology.  “This is intelligence gathering for civilians,” states Bailey.  “We can find out where you are, who you are, who you talk to, where you are most vulnerable.”

GPS tracking is just the icing on the cake.  When you cut into that cake, you’ll find that it’s possible to obtain a personal “malicious cell phone tower” (as Bailey puts it).  Bailey states this tower costs a mere $1,200 and allows anyone to “intercept the voice transmissions, SMS, even data” of a cell phone user.

Using a practice called “war texting,” Bailey demonstrates (in his latest conference) how a person can use a smartphone to mess with everyday technology. This technology includes security cameras, GPS devices, home security systems, traffic management systems, and cars.  Armed with only his cell phone, Bailey frequently demonstrates to his audience that it takes only two hours to only breach a car’s security system – and start a vehicle.

Bailey’s “hacker lessons” have proven one thing: no matter what new technology surfaces, someone will always be trying to break through that technology.

Article Written by Khristen Foss

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A twelve year old student in Suffolk, England, recently used GPS tracking technology to track his mother’s stolen mobile phone, according to the Daily Mail. The phone, an HTC Wildfire, was stolen within weeks of his mother’s purchase of it. It was worth £230, and she placed it on a bar as she ordered a drink.

While the woman, Gemma Richardson, assumed it was gone, as no one had given it to the staff of the nightclub, she told her son what happened. Her son, Kristen Richardson, had previously downloaded a GPS tracking system utility to his mother’s phone. This piece of software allowed him to track where it was. By logging onto her laptop, he pinpointed the precise location of the phone within four meters. The twelve year old then located the address on Google Street View.

The police were then notified of the theft. They found the home in question, and the 21-year-old resident said that he did, in fact, take the phone in the night club.

His mother was reportedly very surprised that Kristen was so tech-savvy in this stressful circumstance: “He told me that he was downloading some sort of technology so he could keep track of it – but I didn’t really take any notice of what he was saying. I just put my phone on the bar when I was buying a drink in the nightclub and then when I looked down it had gone. I felt really stupid and thought I would never see it again.”

While the GPS tracking technology is very impressive in this case, the twelve year old’s tech skills are even more impressive. Who knew that a preteen could be so resourceful in this scenario?

Article Written by Greg Minton

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By Greg Bartlett

Cell phone technology continues to increase, giving people more and more ways to use their cell phones. Today’s cell phones are used for much more than just contacting their friends and family members. However, one thing that is still lacking in effectiveness in cell phone technology is GPS tracking.

GPS & Cell Phones

Cell phones have had the capability for GPS tracking for some time now, but it does not work as well as people might think. People assume that just because their cell phone has GPS tracking capabilities that means that it is as accurate as any GPS tracking system, but unfortunately that is just not true. GPS tracking devices are far more advanced than cell phone versions in many ways.

The most obvious way that cell phone tracking is lacking is in accuracy. Your GPS tracking capabilities are going to be useless anywhere that you do not get a cell phone signal. Not only does a cell phone GPS tracker rely on cell phone towers for a signal, but it does not give the precise readings that other GPS tracking systems do. Real-time GPS tracking systems can give readings within a few feet of the exact location. With cell phones, you’re lucky to be within a couple hundred feet. That might be sufficient if you’re trying to find a broken down vehicle on the side of the highway, but it doesn’t exactly work when law enforcement officers are searching for a missing child in a neighborhood filled with houses and apartment buildings.

Battery power is also a huge factor in cell phone GPS tracking. With all of the new things that cell phones can do, cell phone batteries are barely making it through the day on their charge. Hour-long phone calls, hundreds of text messages, playing pinball, searching online, and checking email every hour all use up precious battery life. By the end of the day, cell phone batteries are hanging on for dear life. This is not the ideal kind of scenario for GPS tracking.

Unfortunately, these are just two of the many faults in cell phone tracking. In spite of what your cell phone company might try to tell you, cell phone GPS tracking is just not up to par with the rest of the GPS tracking world. So think twice before you upgrade your phone to be GPS enabled. Consider purchasing a real-time or passive tracking system instead.

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By Greg Bartlett

Cell phones have become an intricate, almost indispensable part of the average person’s life. People of all ages, from elementary school children to grandparents, carry cell phones for the purpose of safety, convenience, and keeping in touch with family and friends. An added benefit that you may be unaware of is that cell phones can be used for the purpose of GPS tracking. By law, every cell phone must have tracking capabilities in order to aid FBI and police investigations if necessary. The good news for you as a consumer is that you can take advantage of this technology as well. Plans are available from your cell phone provider, some for less than $10 per month, and you never know when this capability could save time, energy, and money.

Cell Phone

GPS tracking gives you the ability to keep track of the transmitting device remotely from your home or office computer. The transmitter sends periodic signals to a receiving device which records the current location. This information can then be viewed in real time or in reports that show the device’s movement over time. Some devices can also transmit information such as speed and direction traveled.

One of the most obvious applications of GPS tracking for cell phones is locating a lost or stolen phone. Cell phone theft creates innumerable problems for you as the owner, since thieves can not only make calls, but also send videos and text messages, download applications, and surf the web. Any action taken that is not part of your cell phone plan means additional charges, which can add up to hundreds of dollars in a matter of hours. The more time it takes you to locate the phone, the greater your risk of being stuck with a hefty bill. With GPS tracking, you can log on to your computer and immediately determine whether your phone is sitting in the movie theater lost and found, underneath your car seat, or in a strange house. This knowledge will give you the information you need to determine whether a call to your cell phone company is in order.

No one plans to lose a cell phone, but those who have done so or have had one stolen understand the panic that ensues. GPS tracking can reduce or eliminate those panic levels by arming you with the capability of nearly immediate results. The peace of mind and money saved is undoubtedly worth the small investment you’ll make in a monthly plan.

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